There was a little dinner-dance at Mrs. Byrd’s, for the season’s debutantes.  It became remembered as one of the most charming of all her charming parties.  To the buds were added a sprinkling of older girls who had survived as the fittest, while among the swains a splendid catholicity as to age prevailed.  A retinue of imported men, Caucasian at that, served dinner at six small tables, six at a table; the viands were fashioned to tickle tired epicures; there was vintage champagne such as kings quaff to pledge the comity of nations; Wissner’s little band of artists, known to command its own price, divinely mingled melody with the rose-sweetness of the air.  West, having dined beautifully, and lingered over coffee in the smoking-room among the last, emerged to find the polished floors crowded with an influx of new guests, come to enliven the dance.  His was, as ever, a Roman progress; he stopped and was stopped everywhere; like a happy opportunist, he plucked the flowers as they came under his hand, and gayly whirled from one measure to another.  So the glorious evening was half spent before, in an intermission, he found himself facing Sharlee Weyland, who was uncommonly well attended, imploring her hand for the approaching waltz.

Without the smallest hesitation, Sharlee drew her ornamental pencil through the next name on her list, and ordered her flowers and fan transferred from the hands of Mr. Beverley Byrd to those of Mr. Charles Gardiner West.

“Only,” said she, thinking of her partners, “you’ll have to hide me somewhere.”

With a masterful grace which others imitated, indeed, but could not copy, West extricated his lady from her gallants, and led her away to a pretty haven; not indeed, to a conservatory, since there was none, but to a bewitching nook under the wide stairway, all banked about with palm and fern and pretty flowering shrub.  There they sat them down, unseeing and unseen, near yet utterly remote, while in the blood of West beat the intoxicating strains of Straus, not to mention the vintage champagne, to which he had taken a very particular fancy.

All night, while the roses heard the flute, violin, bassoon, none in all the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee.  Past many heads in the dining-room, West had watched her, laughing, radiant, sparkling as the wine itself, a pretty little lady of a joyous sweetness that never knew a care.  In the dance, for he had watched her there, too, wondering, as she circled laughing by, whether she felt any lingering traces of pique with him, she had been the same:  no girl ever wore a merrier heart.  But a sudden change came now.  In the friendly freedom of the green-banked alcove, Sharlee’s gayety dropped from her like a painted mask, which, having amused the children, has done its full part.  Against the back of the cushioned settle where they sat she leaned a weary head, and frankly let her fringed lids droop.

At another time West might have been pleased by such candid evidences of confidence and intimacy, but not to-night.  He felt that Sharlee, having advertised a delightful gayety by her manner, should now proceed to deliver it:  it certainly was not for tired sweetness and disconcerting silences that he had sought this tete-a-tete.  But at last his failure to arouse her on indifferent topics became too marked to be passed over; and then he said in a gentle voice:—­